At the moment, I’m listening to Seasick Steve, and I come to think about a question. To me, a very interesting question. I really like to know why you are using Twitter. Is there one reason only, or various reasons?

Let me give you my reasons first, and then, add yours as comments.

I joined Twitter 28 October 2007. I joined for one reason only, and that was because it was something new, and I had no clue what it was. I think I read somewhere that Twitter was going to be something huge, and that the journalist recommended that all his readers should join and start using it. And of course, it was free.

By the way, if you don’t remember when you joined Twitter, you can find out by using When Did You Join Twitter.

When I first joined it, I used it for about a week, that was it. I didn’t understand why I should continue. I didn’t know a person who was using Twitter back in 2007, and I didn’t understand why I should be telling the world what I was doing all the time. So, I left Twitter untouched for more than a year.

Today, several years later, there are four reasons why I’m using Twitter.

- Build relationships
- Communicate with friends
- Process information
- Marketing

Let me give you a brief description.

Build relationships

I use Twitter to find new and interesting people to build a relationship with. This is mostly because of my interest in marketing and using systems like Twitter, but none the less, they become my friends and it’s awesome to stay in touch with them all. I don’t think I met Jan Geronimo at Twitter, I think it was via his blog, but he’s an example of friends you meet online.

Communicate

I use Twitter to communicate with friends. Twitter has helped me to stay in touch with people. To me it’s a lot easier to use Twitter than email, regular mail, or even Facebook. Since I discovered that Eivind Heiberg was using Twitter, a friend I’ve known for more than 30 years, but who have lived more than 18 years in the US, communicating has been so much easier.

Process information

Using Twitter to process information has become an important part of my daily routine. By using Twitter I receive a lot of the news of the world, and I discover new and exciting blog posts. I do this my following Twitter lists (and creating my own Twitter lists), and by targetting keywords.

For instance, if I’m looking for news and information about the Health Care Summit, I’ll target both the keyword “Health Care Summit” and the hashtag #HealthCareSummit. Then, I’ll get all the tweets about this topic.

Marketing

Whenever I publish a tweet, a lot of people are reading it. I know this, because I track many of my tweets. So, when I publish a new blog post, and I send a tweet with a link to the blog post, I know that I’ll get a lot of visitors. Using Twitter for marketing is important to me, it’s a way to communicate with likeminded people. I don’t have to send out tweets with links to my own blog posts, but I can ask questions about marketing stuff I have been thinking about buying, or I’m asking for feedback. Twitter is a very powerful marketing tool. But only if you use it right.

Now, please answer the question.

Why are you using Twitter?

Yesterday, a friend called me while I was at work. He asked me if I wanted to join him and watch Shutter Island later on. At the time, I wasn’t sure. I told him I’d call him back.

The reason I wasn’t sure, was that I didn’t know anything about the movie. So, before letting him know my decision, here’s what I did.

First, I watched the trailer at Apple, then, I published a tweet. I wanted feedback, from people who had watched the movie. The trailer was cool, but I’ve watched a lot of cool trailers for really bad movies.

The tweet was short. It said something like. Have you watched Shutter Island? If you have, what did you think?

That’s one of the reasons why I think Twitter is such a powerful tool. Whatever I ask, in just a few minutes, I receive response from people with their answers. I’ve fixed my iMac this way, and I have received dinner tips this way.

If you are looking for feedback, I can’t think of a better way to get it than to use Twitter. The reason is that even though you might not have that many followers, a lot of people are using Twitter search, and if you tweet about popular topics (like Shutter Island), a lot of people might read your tweet and reply to it.

If you have questions, if you want feedback, use Twitter.

There are two ways to do this.

Just ask the questions. Send a regular tweet and ask the questions, and you’ll get the feedback as regular tweets. This is great for open questions, and when you want people to write what’s on their minds.

The other way is to use polls. There are many benefits of running polls on Twitter. Polls are great for feedback, especially if you’re not looking for complex answers, and when you have specified what the answers are. You can even get comments on the polls, comments that can be a lot longer than 140 characters.

Here are some of the services you should consider using:

- PollDaddy
- StrawPoll
- twtpoll
- POLLpigeon
- Poll Your Followers
- Polls.tw

Oh, I almost forgot. I received feedback that Shutter Island is definitely a movie that I should watch. It didn’t happen yesterday, I decided to go skiing instead. A decision Twitter didn’t have any impact on.